04

It seemed like forever that Fayt simply sat there, watching the flashes of soft warplight passing outside of the escape pod and listening to the steady, constant repetition of the machinery's murmurs and beeps. But then, since the attacks, almost everything had seemed to last forever. He knew that it had not actually been very long at all. The sweat was still wet on his skin.

At last he reached forward and pressed a small button. He did not need to check to see which one it was. Ship evacuation drills were standard for everyone who traveled. He had never thought that he would need them, and found them annoying at the time, but now the routines came back as naturally as breathing and he found himself glad for the seemingly endless repetitions. "Distress signal operational," the generic woman in the computer informed him. He did not know if it was comforting or irritating that none of this, or anything, had or could ever have rattled her or her billions of identically programmed sisters. He nodded as if it could have seen him.

"Searching for life-supporting planets," she told him. He nodded to her again, realizing that it was silly and strange to think of the computer as a 'her' at all even as he did so. He did not even have the time to complete the thought before she chimed up again with the good news: "Planet found."

"Where?" It didn't matter.

"Vanguard III," she responded, "located approximately 0.5 light years from present location. Axial tilt of 35 degrees results in extreme seasonal weather. Existence of humanoid lifeforms confirmed." Fayt nodded again with each short stop. The steadiness of the action was somehow reassuring. "The Federation has classified Vanguard III as an underdeveloped planet. Civilization level: approximately equivalent to sixteenth century Earth. Would you like to review the Underdeveloped Planet Preservation Pact?"

For a moment, Fayt did nothing except to move his head in another faint nod. When he realized this he closed his eyes and let out a long breath. "...Yeah." He could not remember what the Pact said. It was something distant and unimportant to his life, until now, for anything outside of brief mentions in school assignments or the odd news clip. He took a moment to wonder what other things he might need that he had relegated as unimportant and forgotten before the computer began its playback. "Just the important parts." The computer stopped, and began again.

"The Underdeveloped Planet Preservation Pact was established in order to protect planets with developing civilizations." The voice chimed obligingly. "Contact with civilizations that have not reached a certain level of development is strictly prohibited by Federation law. This is due to the fact that contact with advanced civilizations has a high probability of greatly influencing the course of history on a less developed planet. All individuals and organizations belonging to the Pangalactic Federation are required to adhere to the tenets of this Pact, unless faced with a clear danger to life and limb. This Pact is one of the most important components of Pangalactic Federation law and also serves as a guideline for civilian conduct in emergency situations. Violators are tried before the Pangalactic Council."

The computer stopped then and Fayt took a moment to turn it all over in his head. He nodded again and almost laughed at himself for doing so. "They should make these computers with eyes."

"Command not recognized. Please repeat command."

"Nothing. How long until we get there?"

"At our present speed of Warp Six, arrival is estimated in 144 hours."

Almost a week. With everything that had happened only in the last day, six seemed an impossible span of time. It was as if an entirely new and terrible world of possibilities had opened up to him. In six days, why, the whole world could end. He suppressed a shudder. It was better not to think like that. Such things were the realm of fantasy and fiction, of grandiosely melodramatic adventure games. They were not like the simpler impossibilities of war, which he had suddenly found not to be impossible but simply distant from his sheltered life; they did not happen in the real world. The real world, he had found, had more than enough horrors of its own. Escape pods, after all, were equipped to maintain an adult humanoid for up to a week. Six days was cutting it very close to that limit. "Are there any foreseeable problems in getting to Vanguard III? How about energy reserves?"

"No foreseeable problems," the computer reassured blandly. "An adequate supply of energy and food is on board. All systems are operating within normal parameters."

"Is..." He stopped, closing his mouth again even as he opened it. Was there anything else to question? The escape pod would direct itself automatically; even if something were to go wrong, Fayt did not have the knowledge or ability to pilot it or even override its most basic functions. If something went wrong, if the energy reserves had to be diverted and its life of a week was cut to mere days, he did not know how to repair it or even if such a thing was possible. Once again he found that he was helpless except to allow himself to be cradled in the arms of modern convenience, and once again he found that he could not think of it as anything but for the best. "I'm...I guess I'm going to get some sleep. Notify me if anything happens."

"Affirmative."

He could not sleep for an entire week, but for now he closed his eyes on the inescapable truth as the pod's controls hummed and beeped all around him.

He was not Adonis. And he never could be.


There was a figure in the light, the figure of a man, but he could not reach it. He was small and contained, though he did not know by what. He could reach nothing. 'Help me', he tried to say, but he could not be heard over the sounds all around, the small sounds of machines. 'Help me', he tried to say, but he had no voice.

There was a figure in the fire, the figure of a man, but it did not burn. It was massive and free, though he did not know from what. Nothing could reach it. "RESIGN THYSELF," it said, and the sound swallowed the sounds all around, the small sounds of machines. "RESIGN THYSELF," it said, but it had no voice.

It spoke from inside, and the containment shattered around its magnitude. He was released, but he was not freed. Outside was only light. Outside was only fire.

Outside, there was no world.

He was erased.


"Now entering Vanguard III's gravitational field. Prepare for entry turbulence."

Fayt awoke with a start as the pod began to tremble and shake, his head pounding and his face hot beneath a sheen of cold sweat. He could feel it in a river down his back, in trickling streams down his arms amid a sea of goosebumps. He could smell it sharply in the closed air. "What?" The pod lurched again, though the colored monitors all around him continued to glow with the reassuringly muted colors of normal function, and he gripped the edge of the seat. "What?"

"Now entering Vanguard III's gravitational field," the computer repeated. "Some entry turbulence is normal."

Wiping a hand over his face, Fayt felt the roughness of a bandage over his healing palm scratch across his skin. He could not remember applying it. He could not remember any of the the hundred and forty four hours passing, not with this pounding in his skull, deep and hot like a fist of embers in the center of his brain. "Did I...really sleep through everything?" He looked around dazedly, unable to feel anything but a kind of dull disbelief as the image on the faintly vibrating view screen did, indeed, display a planet; all blues and greens and pale cloud formations in the high atmosphere tinted vaguely ocher where the shadow of the planet began dusk and night. He could not have have slept through everything, it was as impossible as to have remembered nothing, yet he felt as though he had simply closed his eyes and somehow passed it all by. He rubbed at his face again. "Computer, confirm...this is Vanguard III?"

"Affirmative," the computer chimed mildly. "Preparing landing sequence protocols."

"How much time has it been?"

"Approximately 144 hours have elapsed since pod deployment."

He stared at the image on the screen, the planet becoming a horizon curve; the great cloudforms becoming more encompassing than defined as the pod plunged towards and then into them. It was very clearly real and there. Had he really been so tired? No, of course not. The rough texture of the bandages assured him that he had been awake, at least, long enough to apply them. Had his state of shock really been so deep that an entire week, however uneventful, had simply vanished into it? Was it better or worse to have simply forgotten? He did not know. He closed his hands, digging the knuckles into his eyes. "I'm losing my mind," he groaned.

"This computer is not equipped to render psychiatric assistance."

At that, he could not help but laugh. All the advancements in the world, and they still did not have a computer that could recognize a figure of speech. "That's okay. Just get me down in one piece."

"Affirmative. Please stand by for landing."

Fayt leaned back in his seat, half looking at his hand, half watching the screen. Between his splayed fingers he could see the pod descending into a deeply wooded area, the forms of the trees, their leaves yellowing with an autumn season, familiar even if the planet itself was not. There was a final rocking motion and a soft thud of sound from below as the pod settled itself down amid the stocky trunks, and after a moment the viewing screen flicked off. Above him, he heard the faint hiss of the airlock releasing. "Landing confirmed," the computer noted. "Releasing door locks." They thumped solidly overhead, then silence for a moment before the door opened, clanging back against the body of the hull, and dim grey light began to filter down amidst the artificial glow that had, for the past week, been the only illumination to touch the cabin. Now it looked almost eldritch, swirling down motes of dust and fall pollen into a world not meant to know either. For a moment, Fayt simply leaned his head back against the seat and squinted up at it, watching it come down.

"Well," he said at last, and for a moment no more than that. He checked the bandages on his hands and found them satisfactory, the wounds beneath all but healed in any case, and then began to climb the ladder up to the exit. He paused at the top, shielding his eyes from a new onslaught of meager light and blinking around at his new surroundings. The air tasted sharp and wild with greenery and, after the closed and circulated atmosphere of the escape pod, somehow massive as if every inhalation drew in the scope of the entire planet. It was cool in way that was almost cold, conjuring images of autumn frosts, a phrase known to him only from classroom literature half-remembered. The calls of wildlife were foreign to him; he did not know from what manner of creature they might come. Though the trees had been familiar from a distance, their leaves and bark were strangely shaped and colored. When he looked down to the forest floor, the ground foliage seemed subtly surreal - close to what he knew, but somehow not quite right. It was not the first time he had been on a different planet, of course. But he had never done so alone, and never outside of the landscaped confines of cities or resorts. Somehow, that made worlds of difference all on its own. He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes for one moment to steady himself. "Well," he said again. "Here we go."

He jumped down from the pod, landing in a crouch. The ground was hard but cushioned by a soft and faintly mulchy layer of forest detritus beneath his sandal, and he could feel tiny lifeforms, probably insects, squirming through it beneath his knee. He stood too quickly and was just as quickly forced to sit on the foreign ground. He did not lean back, having only the pod behind him. He could feel it radiating heat from the friction of entry and cold from the cooling systems beneath the surface which had kept it from igniting the local plant life. Instead, he looked up to the overcast sky. If no one had made contact with his pod in the week it had taken him to arrive, he supposed that must mean that no one would be there to rescue him for some time yet, perhaps a few more days. It certainly could not take any rescue efforts much longer than that to narrow down the number of appropriate planets near enough for the survivors' pods to head towards.

But a few days was still a lot of time for things to go wrong.

"I'd better keep my eyes out," he murmured, and reached back to pull his quad scanner from his pocket without thinking about it. Even as he realized what a foolish thing this was to do- surely it had been dropped, or crushed somewhere in the chaos of his escape - he was surprised to feel his hand close over the smooth casing of the folded pocket computer. He blinked at it in surprise as he pulled it out, but then shrugged it off. They were built to last, after all. Even the military used them. And he was certainly glad to have it. There was no telling what he might run into on an underdeveloped planet, after all...and, sure enough, as he flipped it open and began tapping through the touch screen controls to bypass the everyday applications of communication and scheduling and keeping track of his favorite sports teams or the latest game releases to those functions which it had been made for, scanning and surveying processes he had never expected to rely on for his life, its proximity scanner picked something up nearby and moving quickly. An animal, maybe. Dangerous? There was no way to know. He looked to the side, into the thick alien undergrowth, but it gave away none of its secrets. "Here there be monsters," he said softly. He had meant it as a joke, but the humor somehow fell flat in the face of the potential reality.

For a moment he sat in silence, considering that, and then suddenly snapped the scanner shut again and rose to his feet. He should make himself a weapon, he decided, just in case. The escape pod's replicator should be able to manage that. He brushed himself off as he turned back to the pod's hull, searching for the external controls for a moment before he found the panel that protected them and pried it open. It occurred to him as he did so that the best match to this planet's level of development - the weapon least likely to land him in front of the Pangalactic Council for UP3 violation when all was said and done - was a sword.

He was not sure if that should make him smile or not, but when he input the commands to the pod's system and it obligingly provided him with the weapon - forging it, it seemed, out of nothing but light, a long, simple blade on a short, simple pommel - he found that it did relieve him. Closing his hand around the smooth grip sent a shiver through him, like lightning in his veins. The replicated materials were featherweight, balanced with computer precision; perfect in such a way as something crafted by man or even a more basic machine could not have copied. But for all of that, it was real. For all that the sensations were familiar to him from the simulators, no machine or computer in the world could duplicate the feeling of that knowledge of reality. This was not the weight of a virtual sword, as those he had hefted so many times before, escaping into foreign forests made safe by the promise of save files and restarts, of a world beyond the shutdown commands that would end the game when he grew tired. It was a real object, a real weapon, designed to keep a real person safe from real danger, and as he swung it for the first time, even hoping against hope he would not be called upon to use it, he found the idea still filled him with as much exhilaration as fear. He closed his eyes for a moment, holding the weapon up before him and taking a deep breath. It seemed like the first bit of luck to come his way since the attack.

Please, he thought again, don't let me have to use this thing. He swung it again, one way and then the other, and knew that he could if he had to. It felt right. He had cut down hundreds of foes in simulation with the same such blade. If it came to that, he had been ready to do the same with a broken pipe in the evacuation center. Something about the thought, everything, struck an ill chord, and lacking a sheath Fayt plunged the sword abruptly point-down into the ground. He backed away from it a step and wiped his hands on the legs of his shorts, then pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. He breathed deeply and slowly. His head still ached.

When he lowered his hands again, Fayt realized that the light, already dull when he had arrived, was slanting and growing dimmer. It would be sunset soon enough, and then night. He should find someplace safer to stay, he thought...if there was any such place here.

He reached for his scanner again, flipping the casing open and poring through functions. Could it find shelter for him? He did not know. He had never been called upon to find out. He pressed holographic buttons and slid his finger along floating half-there image screens until suddenly the display bloomed with readings at the outer edge of its search. He expanded the range and found humanoids, some two-dozen clustered together in a relatively close proximity to each other. He frowned down at it slightly. "A...village, maybe?" He could hear the hope and uncertainty grappling each other in his voice, but what he did know for certain was that it was not too far away. If he started now, he might still be able to make it there by nightfall.

You could stay here, a small and reasonable voice in the back of his mind piped in. The pod would provide shelter and protection. There's food and water and it would keep you warm, as well as safe from animals. You wouldn't risk violating the UP3. When the rescue party came, you'd be right here with the distress signal. There's no reason not to stay. It was common sense, he knew, and what all of it boiled down to was that he not only could but should stay here because it was the safest and most reasonable course of action. Safe and contained with the small, inhuman sounds of the machines.

He snapped the scanner shut and jerked his chin up. "I'll go," he said firmly, not to anyone in particular except, perhaps, the small reasonable voice inside that sounded so much like Sophia's. "I know it's a UP3 infringement, but it's an emergency. They'll cut me some slack if I keep a low profile."

The small voice said nothing. Fayt turned back to the pod, briefly, tapping the external controls again. It would not take him long to make his way to the village, but he replicated a light poncho to keep him warm and cover his foreign clothing, and a sheath for his sword to strap to his back. Though the synthetic materials mimicked natural counterparts, he suspected they would not stand up to close inspection without raising questions. He did not, however, intend to let anyone get close enough to do so. As long as he was careful, he was certain everything would be all right. He covered the pod with leaves and branches from the ground to camouflage it in the deep woods. That would not stand up against close inspection either, but the area did not look well traveled and he hoped that that would be enough.

He wrapped the poncho around himself and slung his sword over his back, telling himself that he was Adonis, that there was nothing to fear, that he was a real man of the dark ages, a rough-edged vigilante, perhaps; anything to make it easier when he turned his back on safety and reason to plunge into the dimming green unknown.


It was like fighting his way through a nightmare.

In his life before, the forests he had traversed on earth or any other world had been carefully arranged and maintained to provide a place for outdoor hikes or picnics; artificial approximations of a natural phenomenon. They had wide, clearly marked routes with soft, even mossy ground, and the undergrowth was cleared well away. They were airy and bright and open, the manicured trees widely and carefully spaced except in the odd aesthetic copse or grove. In his simulation games, there had been tightly packed wood and undergrowth to be sure, rough and wild, but only around and outside of cleared paths to the exit or objective. What grew in the winding roads he had been meant to take there had not been obstacles but scenery - an easily bypassed rock here, a large bush to step around or duck behind for cover there. For their closeness and rough edges, he had somehow imagined that these were more true to the reality of the wild than the park woods.

The idea seemed laughable now. Though he had landed in a clearing, in this forest there were no roads at all. What must have been animal paths, too narrow and often too low to be of use to him, snaked off here and there marked only by tiny snapped branches or subtle impressions in the ground cover. The stocky trees grew thickly together or staggered unevenly apart with no visible rhyme or reason, their branches wild and straggling, sometimes reaching down into the undergrowth to catch and scratch. Fallen branches and old logs fetid with rot littered the ground, sometimes blocking his way entirely. Much of the ground cover was a net of roots and vine plants thinly concealed by fallen leaves in drifts of faded yellow and a decidedly un-autumnal ashen grey, spindly ferns wavering up out from between the knots. These had cushioned him when he jumped to the ground from his escape pod, but now they tripped him and concealed the vast seeking webs of above-ground tree roots. The earth below them was hard and uneven, rising and falling unpredictably, sometimes leaving great rocks to thrust up like slick, naked red-black trees into the surface world and sometimes sending him lurching when he found only a drop or hole hidden beneath the floor of roots, from small gullies to greenery-spangled cliffs that seemed to cut the forest asunder into vast tiers and plateaus. He quickly found himself glad for the bandages wrapped around his hands, for they kept his palms safe when he was forced to catch himself time and time again. By the time he thought to use his sword as a walking stick and feel his way, his fingers were raw and sore, but even this action offered his feet no such respite. The sandals he had worn so comfortably on the soft, warm beaches of Hyda offered them no protection from rocks or brambles, leaving them quickly bruised and bloodied. The straps began to chafe, digging deeper as the skin grew raw and began to swell. He could feel blisters forming and breaking at his heels, leaving him limping. He did not at any point see the animal-or whatever it had been-that his quad scanner had picked up, but he could hear things moving just outside of his line of vision, sometimes close and sometimes seeming far, far away, small and furtive. They scratched in the brush like the certainty scratched in the back of his mind that he had made the wrong choice and should head back to the pod; that he could not find his way to it any more if he tried; that he should, perhaps, resign himself, if only to spending the night in the open.

When he stumbled into another clearing at last he nearly wept with relief; when he saw the vines and and ferns tramped down as if under the traffic of many feet, the branches and bushes clearly cut back away to form a deliberate path, and realized that it was not a clearing but a road, he thought for a moment that he had. Certainly, his vision wavered liquidly for a moment and his throat tightened. He made a faint sound without really knowing or caring what it was, and for a moment simply leaned on his sword and enjoyed the feeling of knowing that he was near some form of civilization again. He could hear voices from nearby. They were too far and too jumbled for his communicator to translate, but they sounded wonderful, and when he had steadied himself he put his sword across his back once more and headed towards them.

It was not, however, the village that he had expected to see which greeted him around a large rock formation. Instead, four humanoids-males and adolescents, if he were called upon to guess-milled about in the center of the overgrown road. They all looked about the same to him: dirtily pale-skinned, short, stringy-skinny and gangling. Long ears jutted out from beneath shaggy russet or black hair like those of strange furless lop rabbits, the pointed tips drooping down past their jawlines. They wore coarse-looking woven clothing both undyed and in earthy tones, all belted into layers of vests and tunics and longcoats. In spite of that, and the cold, their calves were exposed below short pants, and their filthy toes stirred at the viney ground cover over the edges of strap sandals. They wore knives at their belts, except for one, who toyed with his weapon uneasily, petting the side of the blade like an unfamiliar animal. Beyond them Fayt could see the crumbling rock walls of some kind of ruins, stained with weather where they peeked out from a veil of vines. Soon, the forest would reclaim them.

The young men stopped talking when Fayt had come into view, and now they simply watched him as he watched them in return. He did not come any closer, but stayed by the rocks.

"Hey," one of them said after a moment. "Stop right there." The delay from his translator was minimal, and, he knew, would vanish entirely with only a sentence or two more to adjust; the sounds and patterns they made, as with most 'human' classified aliens, not too unlike those of at least one terran language. Fayt nodded, not having intended to come any closer just yet. His scanner's reading had suggested quite a few more people here; he did not want to come across hostile at all, but especially to an overwhelming force. "This is a dead end. You get outta here." The young man paused a moment, looking first at his fellows and then back at Fayt. His eyes lingered over Fayt's shoulder-on the hilt of the sword, Fayt realized-and his own hand dropped down to the haft of his knife. "Yeah. You just turn around and get outta here right now, and we won't tell anyone you were here at all."

The other young men nodded solemnly, ears bobbing lightly with the motion. One of them was not much more than a child. Fayt raised his hands slowly, holding them out to the sides with the palms forward in a show of no harm. "I'd like to go past. Can you let me through, please?"

The passive stance seemed to embolden the spokesman, and his wary expression curled into a sneer. "What? What kind of fool are you? You expect me to just smile, nod my head, say 'yes sir' and let you through? We're guarding the road to make sure no one gets through!" He even stepped forward a bit, shoulders back, chest puffed up a bit. Trying to make himself look bigger, Fayt thought with a trace of amusement. It was almost funny how much bolder they'd grown with Fayt's hands away from his own weapon, as if he could not simply reach up and take hold of it. "So no, you can't go past us."

His hand did not leave the knife though, and that was not funny at all. The other three had not come any closer, but they continued to watch him. Their eyes were dark and glossy, like the rocks, and they kept their hands close to their blades, like the leader. "If you don't," one said, "we don't mind teachin' you a lesson."

"Painful lesson," the smallest one echoed. "Cut you up good."

Fayt grit his teeth, feeling his hands twitch at the threats, but did not move from the submissive posture. They were just locals, he reminded himself - citizens of an underdeveloped planet, probably with no martial training to speak of, and now that the one with the drawn knife had come closer he could see that they were not real weapons at all but the kind of implements one might take from a kitchen. Could he take these would-be thugs in a fight if it came to that, his sword against their knives? Certainly. But he was tired, terribly tired, brutally sore, and there were four of them against one of him, more if they called for any of the others his quad scanner had detected earlier. He was far less sure that he could take them in a fight without being forced to do them serious harm in the process. So when he finally moved, it was to take a step back. "All right," he said, and watched them puff up more at his surrender, triumphant gleams entering their eyes. He could almost imagine what was going through their heads, seeing an armed trespasser back down before their superior strength, all of that, bolstering their uncertain swaggers further. It would be worse, he thought, for any traveler who passed this way after him...but there was nothing to be done about that now. "All right. I'll take your advice."

The spokesman stepped forward even as Fayt stepped back, free hand on his hip as he gave a smug nod. "Yeah, see? We understand each other." He gestured imperiously with one hand, but left the other on his knife. Puffed-up, maybe, but not stupid. "Now scram! I don't want to see you back here again, ever."

Fayt took another step back. If he took one to the side, now, he would be hidden by the rock formation again. "Just one thing before I go, please."

"Are you stupid?"

He grit his teeth again, sucking a breath in through them. He let his eyes flick to the lengthening shadows, the thick blackness spreading beneath the cover of the trees where light could not easily pass, and let the breath out again slowly. He had counted on finding a village here. The small reasonable voice in the back of his mind clamored to be heard; he thought it must want to say I told you so. And maybe it had. But he was a long hike away from his escape pod now, night was quickly closing in, he was sore and tired, and while he had not found what he wanted or expected the discovery was still enough to make him want to keep trying before he surrendered to the forest maze. These four and their kitchen knives, after all, had to have come from somewhere. "I'm a traveler, and I don't know these woods. Is there a settlement of some kind nearby? I'm very tired."

There was a pause. Again, the thug looked over Fayt's shoulder consideringly for a moment before lifting the hand that had rest on his hip and pointing off through the forest. "...If you've got nowhere to go, might as well go to Whipple."

One of the others tittered slightly. "That's nowhere, all right."

The spokesman ignored his fellow. "Just follow the road east. You stir up any trouble, or tell anyone about this place out here though-"

"No, no," Fayt assured him, slowly lowering his hands but still holding them passively out to the sides. He took another step back for good measure. "Not a word. Sorry for trespassing."

To this, the young man only grunted slightly, another short "get lost," and waved him off. They were done with him it seemed, but they did not stop watching as Fayt withdrew several more steps, not turning his back on the sentries until he had passed out of their line of sight behind the rocks. He did not hear them start to move about or talk amongst themselves again right away either, except for muted whispers neither he nor his translator were able to make out. They were as wary of him as he was of them, which was only fair - he was an armed stranger and looked nothing like them. In retrospect, he supposed that he should have been prepared for that, but it was too late now. He should have been prepared to get lost and marked his way along the trees, or something like that, as well, but he hadn't thought of that at the time either.

For now, he pulled out his quad scanner again, looking briefly over his shoulder to be sure none of the four thugs had come around the rock to tell him off again. They had not, and so he checked where he had been directed, off to the east. It was easier to find the function he needed than it had been the first time, and soon the screen displayed a number of humanoids clustered together, much as it had before. This time however he could see a second cluster at the edge of his reading, more than were in the original location-the one he had taken for a village but had, in fact, only turned out to be whatever ruins the four thugs were guarding. In a game, that would make it a den of thieves and bandits for the hero to clear out for the sake of the gentle villagers up the road, and while it might still be the former of those he hoped that he was able to steer clear of it in the future. Either way, the new reading suggested the village was still some ways away. Could he still make it before nightfall? On a proper road, where he would not be forced to stumble blindly through the undergrowth and constantly stop to check his bearings on the scanner, he thought that he just might. He closed the quad scanner and tucked it back into his pocket, then stepped away from the rocks back to the center of the road, and began to follow it east.

It was not long before he began to notice the newness of it. Except that that was not entirely right; the rut of the road was deep and well-settled, and so it was not 'new' at all. But much of the brush that had been cut away from the edges had been cut only recently; the broken edges of branches winked sharp and pale from the darkness of the forest edge, and much of the cleared brush was still piled along the edges of the road. Many of the trampled plants in the road were withering but still green, and in several places he was still forced to step around the knotted surface roots of the trees. At one point, he saw an uprooted sapling tossed against the rocks, and the gap it had made in the vine cover in the middle of the path. While it certainly had been a road for a long time, he thought that perhaps it was only just recently being used for that purpose again. But that made sense. Didn't it only lead to ruins, after all? Maybe only games and developed planets found such things fascinating. Certainly the ones he knew of in reality had not held monsters or great treasures, only history.

Fayt was not sure how long he picked his way along the road to the east. The light, which had grown dim, seemed to remain that way for an eternity, never quite descending into night or even true twilight. The sky above him was heavy and grey, and he could not see the sun for either the clouds or the cover of the trees and rising forest tiers. He felt both lighter and heavier than he should have. Had the computer told him this planet had lighter gravity than earth? Heavier? The same? He tried to remember if the computer had told him, if he had even asked, but could not. But no of course it couldn't be heavier because the natives would have looked stronger, more solid, and it certainly couldn't be lighter, could it, because should he really be so tired if it was? Perhaps it was a week of sudden forced inactivity after the frenzied exertion of the evacuation from Hyda that left him feeling so sore and exhausted. Perhaps he was at a higher elevation than he had thought, and the air was thin. With the forest rising and falling the way it did, there was no way to tell simply by looking around, and he did not know how to check such a thing on his scanner. He made a note to figure it out when he found a place to rest. He was eventually forced to draw his sword again-not to fight and not to balance him against treacherous footing, but simply to hold himself up against the desire to slump to ground and rest.

Eventually, he noticed the forest beginning to fall away from around him, not vanishing but thinning, and the vine-straggled old road linked up with another. The new road was not green and grey with vines and trampled ferns, but instead open and bare, the dirt a brazen, glaring russet color that jarred his eyes after so long staring at the monotonous shades of the forest. He blinked at it several times, until he could pick out the myriad footprints, layers on layers, some fresh and some only visible as faint and crumbling impressions dried into temporary solidity, before stepping out onto it himself. The texture felt strange under his sandals. Clay? No, that was not it. It was too soil-like, and the trees still grew up out of it. What difference did it make? He realized that his mind was beginning to wander. How far until the village? He realized that he was afraid to check his scanner. It had looked closer from there. What if it was still far away? What would he do?

He did not know, and so he continued forward instead. The trees continued to thin, giving way to more rocks, black and brown and red, thrusting up both bulbous and geometric, glittering with metallic bands. He watched them to give himself something to focus on. He had been walking forever. His feet, screaming with pain, had gone blessedly but frighteningly numb. Night had come and gone and he had not noticed, he was certain; come and gone and come and gone again, over and over. He could see the rocks rising out of the ground as he watched, pressing themselves higher, trees like twisted fingers scratching the heavy sky.

His sword skidded across the ground, kicking up dirt, and his knees struck the road. He had not seen the rocks rising. It was him that was moving, falling, as his support slipped from his stiff, numb fingers. He tried to rise, putting a hand on his knee, and was surprised to see that it was bloody again. No, how could that be a surprise? He had fallen so many times. Maybe he would rest for a moment after all - and so he did, keeping his head down, breathing heavily. The red soil of the road blurred in and out of his vision, footprints vanishing and appearing again with each ragged inhalation. Were there more here than there had been further out, or were his eyes playing tricks on him? "It looked so close...on the scanner..." Who was he talking to? Was he making excuses? Who was there to hear him?

I'm supposed to be stronger than this, he told himself, I'm supposed to be some brainless muscleman, isn't that what she said? He lifted his head, looking for his sword. It was right there in front of him; if he picked it up, he could lean on it and make it the rest of the way. He knew that he could because he was supposed to be stronger than this, was stronger than this, refused to be anything but stronger than this. He took his hand from his knee and stretched it out, reaching for the simple pommel. Simple and hard and real.

He remembered the sword being light, but now it was too heavy. His fingers would not close around it, and he could not lift it up. His trembling legs buckled beneath him, dropping him forward. He realized as his chest hit the ground that he was going to faint at the same moment that he told himself how ridiculous that was; he couldn't faint, not here, not like this. His cheek struck the ground as well, breath scattering grains of dirt from in front of him. They became like mountains, every one, red and black and brown, jagged and rising, smooth and slick. Hematite, his brain provided sleepily. And iron. The ground is red because of oxidization. There must be so much. He thought of the dirty, pale young men with their kitchen knives and wondered if it was also in their hair, their russet hair, rusting them away. How silly. What a silly thing to think.

He thought he heard someone calling to him, but that was silly as well. Who would be calling to him here? The sound of footsteps crunching through the dirt was massive. Suddenly the world seemed very bright. The light hurt, so he closed his eyes. Something small and warm touched his face, almost hot against the chill of the endless evening before it was torn away, the crunching sound like a roar in his ears, larger than the world.